Thredbo goldmine - at $8000 a year

One of Australia's biggest companies has been allowed to rent the Thredbo ski and summer tourist resort from taxpayers for as little as $8000 a year, while last year reporting a turnover of more than $36.6 million.

A confidential state cabinet minute reveals the deal, amid plans to renew the lease for a further 50 years, under similar terms and conditions.

The 11-hectare village and about 940 hectares of surrounding public parkland is being leased by Kosciusko Thredbo, under a 45-year deal that is due for renewal in 2007.

The company then sub-leases the land to hundreds of businesses and ski-lodge owners. It also runs chairlifts, ski slopes and other enterprises on the land.

Kosciusko Thredbo is a subsidiary of the stockmarket-listed Amalgamated Holdings, whose other interests include the Greater Union cinema chain. It also owns the Rydges chain of hotels, one of which is in the alpine resort.

The company denied that it was paying $8000 a year for the land but declined to provide an alternative figure.

Garry Huggett, Kosciusko Thredbo's property and development manager, said the annual rent was the greater of either $8000 or 5 per cent of the company's taxable income.

"We pay a percentage based on our revenues," Mr Huggett said. "If we have a good year, the government has a good year. If we have a bad year, we cry, but the government probably missed out a bit, too. It is based on our profit.

"There is a minimum of $8000 a year. And we have paid considerably more than the minimum amount for many years. For many, many years."

But the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) said taxpayers had received the minimum rent under the terms of the lease for seven of the past 14 rental years.

The cabinet minute also indicates that $8000 a year was "generally" what taxpayers had received since the lease was first signed in 1962.

Before being sold to Amalgamated Holdings for about $18 million in December 1986, the lease was held by the property developer Lend Lease.

The NPWS said that sometimes the rent payments were higher than $8000 but the total amount collected under the lease over the past 14 years was less than $2.5 million.

By comparison, taxpayers collected nearly $3 million alone last year from the nearby Perisher ski resort, which is sub-leased directly by the State Government, says the service.

"From the Government's perspective we would very much like to secure more leasing revenue from Kosciusko Thredbo," said Simon Lyas, manager of the resorts division of the state's NPWS.

"Because, let's face it, they have had a pretty good break as far as their rent is concerned all these decades. I am not criticising the system, all I am saying is that is a fact."

A spokesman for the Environment Minister, Bob Debus, confirmed the rental returns but said there was little the Government could do.

"Over the years legal advice has been provided to the Government by numerous QCs - as recently as mid-2003 - that there is little or no possibility of changing the base rent [Kosciusko Thredbo] currently pays in any renewed lease beyond 2007," he said.

The cabinet minute, obtained by the Herald, says that the Government wanted to impose a ski-lift tax in 1997 partly out of frustration with the terms of the lease.

The proposal for the tax - rebatable against any lease rental paid to the NPWS - was dropped after the Thredbo landslide disaster of the same year.